Why Do So Many 'Star Wars' Fans Hate 'The Last Jedi'?

Scott Mendelson
, ContributorI cover the film industry.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Walt Disney and Lucasfilm

John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Daisy Ridley in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi.'

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has earned overwhelmingly positive reviews, with a 93% fresh rating and 8.2/10 score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Rian Johnson sci-fi sequel snagged $220 million on its domestic debut weekend, second only to The Force Awakens ($248m), along with a $451m global cume. And it has earned an A from Cinemascore polling.

So it must be a little odd for Walt Disney and Lucasfilm to find themselves on the defensive as the post-debut narrative becomes a conversation about why the film didn’t please all of its viewers. And yet that’s modern movie media commentary in a nutshell. The Last Jedi has good reviews, good audience polling and a good box office gross. What went wrong?

I do feel that the Rotten Tomatoes audience polling, which is where much of the chatter emerged, has been gamed by the same kind of trolls who brought down Ghostbusters’ score and down-voted the hell out of its trailers last year. But whether or not it’s a diabolical conspiracy from (among other fun theories I’ve heard) DC fans taking revenge for Justice League’s critical thrashing or folks protesting the Disney/Fox deal, the overall result is that we’re discussing not an unqualified triumph for Disney’s filmmaking empire but why a seemingly great Star Wars movie is seemingly pissing off so many Star Wars fans. Needless to say, though, there are good reasons you can still dislike the movie and still hold on to that SJW card (mine is on suspension because I liked Downsizing).

Part of what we’re seeing here with Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the eternal struggle between (some) hardcore fans and (some) general audiences. Fandom has been such a loud force on the internet at least since The Dark Knight turned them into a source for mainstream media traffic. There can often be a push-pull between making films that play to the fans as well as to the general audiences, especially as the narrative created by the hardcore fans can often overpower a less exciting truth. Batman & Robin didn’t die because of angry Bat-fans, and The Lord of the Rings was huge precisely because it made general moviegoers into Middle Earth fans.

But Star Wars is such a hugely popular franchise that it’s almost inevitable that any Star Wars film is going to annoy or anger some sizable faction of the large fandom. If The Force Awakens was at least partially rooted in comforting narrative repetition and old-trilogy nostalgia (with some sharp new characters and a dash of King Arthur lore thrown in for good measure), then The Last Jedi is about, as Adam Driver's Kylo Ren says during a trailer-friendly monologue, letting the past die, killing it if you must to be who you were born to be.

It also ignores or gives non-fantastical answers to the big “burning questions” that fans pointlessly speculated about after The Force Awakens. And if you think Rian Johnson mocked your endless speculation, then A) maybe he did and B) Disney and Lucasfilm aren’t the ones that trolled the media with speculative clickbait about Rey's parents, Snoke's secret origins or what-have-you for two years. Speaking of which, those who are complaining about Disney ruining Star Wars are missing that, give or take behind-the-scenes shenanigans that I’m not privy to, these are Lucasfilm productions and Kathleen Kennedy’s movies. Although one big reveal puts the film’s (and thus the saga’s) philosophies firmly alongside Brad Bird’s Pixar gem Ratatouille. Anyone can cook. …

It’s also, nitpicks or genuine critiques notwithstanding, about telling the original batch of Star Wars fans that the franchise isn’t necessarily for them anymore. It’s rather for those who have been waiting on the sidelines (fans who weren’t white men) or fans of all stripes young enough to have fallen for Star Wars through The Force Awakens or Star Wars: Rebels. It’s a weird contradiction in modern fandom, with folks my age (or older) wanting new variations on beloved childhood pop culture icons yet wanting those iterations to appeal more to us than to our kids.

If The Force Awakens was about giving Star Wars back to the fans, then The Last Jedi was a pass-the-torch installment that argued that old-school IP is only worthy of continuation if it does something different and goes somewhere new. And as much as we love Star Wars for what it was back in 1977, we must also remember that Star Wars was a huge deal in 1977 partially because it was new and different from everything else in the marketplace at that time. In a world 40 years later where Hollywood still copies the New Hope formula (Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) and tries to turn Star Trek into a Star Wars-level success, the original franchise has to go in new directions or face irrelevancy.

This does not mean that everyone who dislikes The Last Jedi is clinging to desperate childhood memories or unwilling to accept change in the stuff they love. I didn’t like The Force Awakens,and I liked Batman v Superman more than Blade Runner 2049. You may think me just as crazy as I think you, but live and let live is still the sanest response to these debates.

For those who genuinely take issue with the big changes and the deconstruction at play in their beloved IP, it’s not just about dude-bros getting upset because their avatar (Oscar Isaac) spends the entire movie being wrong and getting smacked down by his two older female superiors (Carrie Fisher and Laura Dern). Sure, that’s part of the outcry, to say nothing of having Kylo Ren’s Gamergate fanboy actually exhibit more “let it go” maturity (save for that unrequited Jedi crush) than most members of that stereotypical demographic while the women of all ages and races save the day.

But in these grim times, when escapism is that much more vital, it is harsh to see your favorite franchise essentially tell you that you no longer matter and that you aren’t going to save the world. That’s the opposite of nostalgia.

As a film critic and film fan, I am excited to see the Star Wars franchise go off in bold new territories. If we’re going to be getting a deluge of revamped IP in the next decade or so, it is absolutely vital that it have something new to say about who among us can be heroes or somewhere new to go in terms of how the battle can be fought in order to artistically justify itself. But as a citizen during these horrible times, I can certainly understand the frustration of being challenged and somewhat confounded by a cherished piece of would-be comfort food.

I’m not saying that a Star Wars movie has a responsibility to be the equivalent of Sullivan’s Travels because the real world is currently awful and anxiety-producing. Every Star Wars movie has been at least somewhat political, and many arrived in theaters during challenging times. And depending on your demographic, this may not be the first time your world has been filled with fear and anxiety.

But there is something to be said about a Star Wars movie of all things that, in a more explicit way than usual, forces you to confront the very reality you came to escape from in the first place and leave you not with a hopeful promise of eventual victory but the idea that, like Moses, you might not be around to see the Promised Land.

In essence, this isn’t unlike the Star Wars prequels, which explicitly detailed a murderous dictatorship rising out of a democratic Republic and ended with a generation of heroes facing down absolute failure with only the hope that the next generation would do better. And if that was an easier pill to swallow back in 2005, it was because we had already seen the happy ending in the form of the first three Star Wars films (which, it should be noted, came out after Nixon was gone and the Vietnam War had ended). But The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi offer us a legacy of generational failure with no guarantee that the new generation of heroes won’t repeat the sins of the past.

Even if Episode IX ends with victory over the First Order, the comforting legacy of the original trilogy has been undone by the grim futures for our iconic heroes, which ironically was one of my qualms with The Force Awakens in the first place. In Return of the Jedi, the circle is complete. But in The Last Jedi, the circle has broken, and those of us who grew up with Luke, Leia and Han are being told that it’s not our stories, we’re not the heroes anymore, and the lone hotshot playing by his own rules to make the big play or the suicide run isn't the key to victory.

It’s not like the last 40 years of Luke Skywalkers or Han Solos have done a bang-up job of things anyway. The Last Jedi is about older would-be heroes admitting having failed and finding peace in the idea that the next generation may not repeat their mistakes. As much as any movie released in the last year or two, The Last Jedi is about the times we live in. It’s a great movie, but it’s lousy escapism.

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